How Vendasta’s AI Software Helps Agencies Acquire More SMB Clients

AI software is an umbrella term for the various ways in which artificial intelligence technology is presented to users. Some examples you may be familiar with are OpenAI, Gemini, and Anthropic.

Marketing agencies can greatly benefit from these various forms of AI software to enhance the marketing services they provide to their clients. For example, generative AI can expedite the process of writing content for social media or email marketing. 

It can also reduce costs associated with producing visual content. For instance, marketing agencies no longer need to hire an extensive in-house team of designers. With the power of generative AI tools, marketing agencies can cater to the needs of dozens of SMBs with just a few employees.

While this hodgepodge of AI tools can expedite the fulfillment times for marketing agencies, AI technology is progressing in leaps and bounds, introducing AI-powered platforms. In this article, we'll examine Vendasta's AI software, which gives you the tools you need to acquire, serve, grow, and manage your clients—all in one place.

The Challenges of Acquiring SMB Clients in 2024

As the owner of a digital marketing agency, you’re, no doubt, well familiar with the many obstacles that stand in the way of making profits.

Obstacle #1: Fierce Competition

One of the prominent ones is the fierce competition. According to data, North America's current digital agency market is oversaturated. For example, California has 11,595 agencies, and Florida has 7,693. 

With such a vast number of agencies, it may be hard to find your marketing niche, cut through the noise, design a successful go-to-market strategy, and differentiate yourself from the many competitors. 

Obstacle #2: Tight Budgets

SMBs often operate on tight budgets, with minimal room for error when investing in services like digital marketing. This makes them cautious about where and how they spend their marketing dollars. 

Before committing, SMBs want to see a clear and tangible return on investment (ROI). Agencies that cannot provide solid proof of value or specific examples of how their strategies have worked in the past may struggle to win over these clients.

Additionally, SMBs may not always understand the complexities of digital marketing. This leads to a need for agencies to not only provide proof of their services but also to educate potential clients on how and why their efforts will lead to results. 

The need to polish a lot of sales collateral, including case studies, white papers, and testimonials, adds an additional layer of difficulty in convincing SMBs that their investment will help them with their pain points.

Obstacle #3: Lead Quality

Finding and nurturing quality leads is a time-consuming endeavor, especially in the SMB space. Agencies must sift through numerous potential clients to identify businesses that are both ready to invest in digital marketing and aligned with their services.

The process of moving leads through the sales funnel is often slow, as SMB owners are frequently pulled in multiple directions and may not prioritize marketing decisions.

Medium-sized agencies, in particular, face challenges here because they often lack the resources to establish a scalable and efficient lead nurturing process. Unlike larger agencies with dedicated sales teams and automation tools, medium-sized firms may struggle to identify and convert high-quality leads consistently.

Building trust, educating potential clients, and addressing objections can extend the sales cycle considerably. 

AI-Powered Prospecting: Identifying the Right SMB Clients

A common problem marketing agencies face is the challenge of identifying which leads are most likely to convert. Indeed, according to the lead conversion statistics provided, 43% of marketing and sales professionals report that collecting enough data on leads is the greatest barrier to successful lead conversion.

Without proper tools, you waste time chasing after potential customers who might not be ready to invest or may require marketing services that you don't yet offer. 

Vendasta offers a solution to this problem with its Snapshot Report. The Snapshot Report is an AI-powered prospecting tool that automatically generates personalized needs assessment reports for potential clients. These reports help you target the right SMB prospects by assessing key marketing needs and pinpointing specific areas where the business can benefit from your services. Better yet? If you don't offer a specific service they require, our marketplace is filled with white-label software that is ready for you to rebrand and launch as your own.

Automating Lead Nurturing and Engagement

Research tells us that marketing agencies often lack sufficient sales resources to ensure effective sales outreach. 

Marketing agencies that rely solely on manually running email campaigns for cold outreach, follow-ups, news updates, and meeting scheduling often fall behind their competitors, and prospects can grow cold. SMBs, in particular, tend to move cautiously and require ongoing sales engagement before making a decision.

Vendasta’s AI software can help automate lead nurturing and engagement. To begin with, it seamlessly integrates with Vendasta’s AI Chatbot. This tool automates lead capture by collecting all the necessary information about the prospects that engage with the chatbot and populating Vendasta’s AI CRM with this data.  Marketing agencies can then leverage this data to streamline their sales pipeline, making the acquisition process more efficient and ensuring no opportunity slips through the cracks. 

For example, automated email campaigns can engage leads at every stage of the customer journey, sending relevant content, updates, and reminders.  Also, Vendasta can send reminders to sales reps, making sure they never forget about making a follow-up sales call or attending meetings with prospects. 

Proving Value with AI-Driven Client Insights

SMB owners tend to scrutinize every dollar spent, especially on services like marketing, where the ROI isn’t always immediate or clear. You’re, no doubt, well aware that it takes at least 3-6 months to start seeing results from SEO efforts.

According to industry experts, business owners pay approximately $3,500 per month to marketing agencies and $75-$100 per hour to individual SEO specialists. These are immense expenses for SMBs. That’s why it’s important that marketing agencies show exactly how their marketing efforts are benefiting their clients with data-backed evidence of success.

One of the outstanding features of Vendasta is that it empowers marketing agencies with the ability to white-label an Executive Report. This is a powerful tool that can pull data from Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Facebook, and Google Ads to give clients—whether single-location or multi-location businesses and franchises—a comprehensive view of their marketing performance.  Serving as proof of performance, the white-label Executive Report is a silver bullet to reducing the rate of client churn. 

Enhancing Client Acquisition with Marketplace Offerings

As we mentioned before, one of the hurdles preventing marketing agencies from filling their sales pipeline with hot leads is the fact that the agencies may not specialize in the services that are the first priority for SMBs. For example, your agency could be an expert in content marketing but may lack expertise in website development.

Vendasta’s Marketplace allows marketing agencies to expand their portfolios with a wide range of white-label marketing services. A cool feature is that you can pick and choose which products and services you want to resell under your brand. 

When your clients navigate the Executive Report, they will see automatic recommendations on what additional products or services can enhance their online presence. In a nutshell, Vendasta can automate your upselling and cross-selling strategy. Becoming a one-stop solution for all of SMBs’ marketing needs can give marketing agencies a leg up. Comprehensive marketing agencies can sell their packages as hotcakes thanks to the fact that a majority of SMB owners will be grateful to be able to avoid the headache of dealing with a mix of marketing solution providers.

The reality is that SMB owners are already overwhelmed with managing complex logistics. You can be the solution. 

Increasing Client Retention to Boost Acquisition

For B2B SaaS companies, the average CAC is $239. It’s no doubt more costly to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones. Consistent client communication is integral to maintaining client relationships and reducing churn for marketing agencies.

Vendasta’s white-label Business App provides marketing agencies with a client-facing web app that gives SMB owners everything they need to succeed, end-to-end, under your brand. Through you, they get access to conversion-building products, a customer communication hub, appointment booking, automated reporting, and more.  By reducing churn and increasing retention, you can save time and resources on customer acquisition and dedicate more time to providing top-notch marketing services to your clients.

Automating Administrative Tasks to Focus on Growth

Marketing automation can help save time on repetitive tasks like lead scoring, email marketing, social media posting, and reporting. Data tells us that AI digital marketing helps business professionals save an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes per day. Let's look at the numbers:

• Automated lead scoring can save approximately 10 hours per week.
• Automated social media posting can save 6 hours per week.
• Automated email marketing can save 10-15 hours per week.

On top of marketing automation, Vendasta’s platform also helps automate billing and payments. Marketing agencies can invoice, bill, and collect payments efficiently without needing to juggle multiple systems or tools. 

Conclusion

Acquiring more SMB clients requires more than just a great service offering—it requires efficiency, precision, and the right tools, such as leveraging an AI employee to streamline operations.. Vendasta’s AI software is well-positioned to help marketing agencies reap the rewards of AI marketing integration. 

Ready to see Vendasta’s AI software in action? Request a demo today to learn how it can help your marketing agency thrive in a competitive market.